CNC Machine Tools Success Stories

Deer Park Oil Tools

In an industry where the stakes are high, safety comes first. Deer Park Oil Tools talk about safety, quality and their new Mazak PowerMaster.

 

Deer Park Oil Tools

The oil and gas industry is highly profitable and worth billions of dollars globally. It can also be a highly dangerous one as we saw earlier this year in the Gulf of Mexico where lives were lost after equipment failed. This is why such a great importance is placed on safety and creating quality products, and why it’s important to use quality machinery.

Deer Park Oil Tools is a small boutique operation that provides machining services within the oil and gas industry specialising in threading, particularly API and premium threading and connections. Operating out of two manufacturing sites; one in Sale, Victoria and the other in Canning Vale, Western Australia, DPOT manufacture new equipment such as drill pipe, cross-overs and pup joints, and provide repair and refurbishment machining for drill pipe and casings.

The company places a great emphasis on safety and in 2007 completed 2000 days without recording a single Lost Time Injury which is impressive to say the least. John Ure of Deer Park thinks the emphasis on quality and safety within the industry will continue to increase.

He says “From my own point of view, it’s always been high in the industry and I think there’s been a bit of complacency, there hadn’t been any major incidents for many years and I think the Timor Sea and the Gulf of Mexico accidents put a certain amount down to complacency and (it) was a wake-up call that you just have to maintain the highest standards, there’s no compromise on quality. We have to be sure that what we send out is right and the consequences of not being right are enormous.”

Deer Park have been operating Mazak CNC machine tools at both manufacturing sites for more than 20 years with recent additions to their machining capabilities being a Slant Turn 60 and a CyberTech 4500M for Sale and a Slant Turn 450 and a PowerMaster for Canning Vale.

Sold and supported by John Hart Pty Ltd, the new machines come with many benefits including improved safety, efficiency, improved quality and reliability, also ease-of-use and increased productivity. Up-to-date training in the latest Mazatrol controllers was also provided by John Hart.

Deer Park DPOT hold a geographically exclusive license that authorises them to produce VAM and Hydril threads making them the only company in Australia able produce those particular threads. “If anybody wants to get a VAM thread or a fox or a bear thread repaired in this neck of the woods, we are the only shop in the area that can help.”

They have a number of machines in their workshop that are able to produce these threads, but owner John Ure’s personal preference lies with the Mazak Power Master.

John says “In terms of a machine that’s designed to thread long pieces of steel, I’ve never seen a lathe that’s better, I’ve never seen anything that comes near it. It’s easy to program, it’s reliable, it’s very sound mechanically and it produces outstanding results time and time again. It’s almost indestructible.”

While they have experimented with various ways of cutting specialised threads they always come back to the Power Master.

John says “This is just my personal bias; I believe the PowerMaster configuration is more rigid than that of the slant bed type.....when you’re handling a 40 foot long pipe and you’re trying to hold that rigidly between two chucks and produce a thread without chatter, I think the PowerMaster is the way to go. The PowerMaster without the tail stock and just as a chucker is ideal for handling a long piece of pipe.”

Their ISO9001 certification was recently upgraded to meet ISO9001:2008 standards, which means they now allocate more time focusing on their customer’s expectations and measuring customer feedback. State-of-the-Art machinery will help improve these results as the products will be produced with greater efficiency and be of higher quality.

John says “We are confident in our recent investment in new machine tools, in which the PowerMaster and other Mazak machines have been at the forefront, we’re really well positioned for the future. We are feeling confident about the next 2-3 years.”